If it is the same as with GIMP, I solved the problem by scanning in the sketch large coloring everything at that size using the paint bucket feature and only then reducing it to about 650 by 850 or so for the adding of speech bubbles and dialogue.

Now when I color everything looks right. Click on my icon and look at my latest page and then compare that to my first page and you will see the huge difference that simply coloring large made.

Ahem! This is not to say that there are not other ways to fix this common problem. I suspect that you probably can fix it, in fact, by using different layering techniques. I, however, tend to take the easiest approach until it becomes inconvenient.

I have no idea for inkscape. Don't use it. I'm actually surprised to hear that it has a paint bucket, being a vector program.

I'm not 100% with GIMP either, since i rarely if every use GIMP…. but in that case, it being a raster program, I can say with relative certainty that its caused by the anti-aliasing. If anti-aliasing was off, you would not experience this (but for many reasons when it comes to web display, etc, you'll probably want it on.) In Photoshop when i have the paint bucket on i turn the “tolerance” setting way up– I believe it goes up to 255 (which will most likely fill your whole screen), so I hover below that, I think at 225 or so.

Keep your outlines as hard as possible.

I also notice that this problem is far worse if I'm working on a transparent layer vs a filled layer.

Scaling down like CH said, is also a possible solution, but might not be the best one, because it doesn't solve the problem for the high res artwork. Which you may not need for webcomics, but will if you ever plan on printing. I would have to suggest, that even if you have zero plans for printing now, 2, 3, or 27 years down the line you may get a hair up your butt that you suddenly want to have your comic printed– You'll be kicking yourself that you only have small files. I say, leave that option always open.

I'm glad that Metalbender92 keeps asking all these fundamental questions, because they are definitely helping me get up to speed again with my graphics package techniques. For instance mattchee, this forum post made me reconsider my process and so I experimented with also doing the dialogue and the word balloons at large scale too. Only when everything was done and the strip was ready for uploading did I scale it down and save it as a jpeg file.

I must say that I am very pleased with the results and it should look very nice tomorrow when I upload it. For the first time my word balloons and dialogue look exactly like I want them to look. I may have misjudged – I'll admit – on the dialogue color for a couple of the balloons, but that issue aside, I am very happy with the result.

So keep asking these questions Metalbender92, because they are doing me a world of good! :)

The best way I know of to get around that in any imaging program is to simply just not use the paint bucket if you can avoid it by laying the colour in with the paint brush on a lower layer or by using something like the multiply function in Photoshop.

No guarantee that works in Inkscape since I don't use that program, but I know it works in Corel Painter, Photoshop, illustrator, GIMP and Paint.net.

mattcheeI have no idea for inkscape. Don't use it. I'm actually surprised to hear that it has a paint bucket, being a vector program.

The paint bucket in Inkscape is akin to the “Live Paint” tool in Illustrator. It's raster based, but it's converted back into a vector shape. The gaps produced by it are similar to what you might find in Photoshop with a low tolerance setting. The remedy is that with the tool, you can set a specific value for it to expand by automatically after you fill in the shape. I know you're not the one looking for advice, I just thought it might interest you, since you've said that you do a lot more vector work when you're in your job. (Was it you who said that?)

mattcheeI have no idea for inkscape. Don't use it. I'm actually surprised to hear that it has a paint bucket, being a vector program.

The paint bucket in Inkscape is akin to the “Live Paint” tool in Illustrator. It's raster based, but it's converted back into a vector shape. The gaps produced by it are similar to what you might find in Photoshop with a low tolerance setting. The remedy is that with the tool, you can set a specific value for it to expand by automatically after you fill in the shape. I know you're not the one looking for advice, I just thought it might interest you, since you've said that you do a lot more vector work when you're in your job. (Was it you who said that?)

I was interested to know that, and I do use vector (Illustrator) a lot at work! Ha! Thanks for the info.